The criminalisation of drugs has failed to deter addiction but instead triggered use inside prison walls and worsened the costly overcrowding of prisons.
This is one of the arguments that retired Constitutional Court justice Edwin Cameron, with co-authors Rebecca Gore and Sohela Surajpal, has made in a new book titled Behind Prison Walls.
The authors have inspected the state of prisons in the country under the Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services (JICS) headed by Cameron.
The book was recently launched at a packed Exclusive Books store in Rosebank filled mostly by members of the legal fraternity. Gauteng judge president Dunstan Mlambo was among those who were not lucky enough to get a seat and stood during the book’s debut.
Acting deputy chief justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga led the interview of the three authors. One of the pointers from the interview, which had the crowd reacting, was the debate on the decriminalisation of drugs and whether criminalisation has helped with rehabilitation or made substance abuse worse.
“The biggest public policy mistake in the past 125 years was the war on drugs — the criminalisation of drugs has wreaked havoc on our country,” said Cameron.
He argued that criminalisation has led to the terrible conflict, murders and violence on the Cape Flats of the Western Cape because the gangs prey off it.
Cameron said if the government adopted the idea of decriminalisation of drugs and used the money meant for incarceration to treat drug addiction as a prominent public health issue it would produce beneficial reforms of the prison system.
“I hope that riles up a lot of you,” he remarked with a smile to the audience.
“We don’t say drugs should be permitted. Alcohol was also dealt with in the US as a criminal problem for 12 years and it was a catastrophe, the same with drugs.”
SA’s 243 prisons battle overcrowding with an inmate population of 164,885. Of the total number, 104,089 are sentenced inmates and 60,796 are accused awaiting trial.
According to the JICS, the upkeep of an inmate, whether on remand or sentenced, costs the government R330 a day. This amounts to millions each month.
The three legal minds explore the decriminalisation of drug use proposal further in their book.
“Using dagga and other drugs and possessing them for private purposes should not be crimes,” the book reads.
“We say this fully aware of the sometimes disastrous consequences drug use and addiction have for the users, their loved ones and communities.
“But, like using alcohol — another dangerous, addictive substance — drug use is an urgent public health issue.”
In 2024, President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into law the Cannabis for Private Purposes Act. The act removed cannabis from the Drugs and Drug Trafficking Act.
The authors argue many people who get arrested for drug possession or use are poor and not the moneyed drug lords benefiting from the profits.
Drug lords all over the world have infiltrated the justice system, corrupting law enforcement officials to avoid imprisonment.
“Two decades ago, the Jali commission acknowledged the widespread smuggling of drugs by correctional officials and inmates through corrupt gang networks. In the two decades since then, this has only become worse,” the book reads.
Judge Thabani Jali’s report in 2002 detailed how drug trafficking by warders in cahoots with prisoners was rife.
Cameron, Gore and Surajpal contend the decriminalisation of drugs would not be a magic wonder.
“Decriminalisation does not bring a drug-free paradise. Dedicated resources are key, as are interventions to save lives, heal lives and safeguard communities — which must be based on evidence of what works.”
The authors argue the SA jail system has not worked for rehabilitation purposes. Instead, prisons have become places dominated by gangs and crime.
It has been a growing phenomenon in the country’s prisons for gang members to kill correctional services officers to climb gang ranks, turning prisons into murder dens instead of rehabilitation spaces.
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